Nancy Pearl

Ways to Connect

Longtime KUOW listeners know that Nancy Pearl calls herself an armchair historian. She tells KUOW's Marcie Sillman about Candice Millard's new book "Hero of the Empire," a chronicle of Winston Churchill and South African's Boer War.

Award winning short story writer Nina Allan has just published her first novel. Although bookstores and libraries may file it in the science fiction/fantasy section, librarian Nancy Pearl tells KUOW's Marcie Sillman that Allan's book "The Race" is best described as experimental fiction.

Terry McDonnell spent his career as an editor at an assortment of national magazines, and he's got the dirt of the writers he worked with. Nancy Pearl tells KUOW's Marcie Sillman you'll find some great stories in McDonnell's essay collection, "The Accidental Life."

Most of the time, Nancy Pearl loves a good literary thriller. But sometimes, she just likes to chill out with a page turner. Today she tells KUOW's Marcie Sillman about a new writer she's just discovered named Becky Masterman, author of a series featuring a retired FBI agent. The book is called "Rage Against the Dying."

Some books are page turners; other require a little more concentration. Nancy Pearl tells KUOW's Marcie Sillman that Carol Black's novel "Orphans of the Carnival" is not an easy read, but the effort pays off in the end.

Marcie Sillman talks with book hugger Nancy Pearl about "Avid Reader" — a title after the book hugger's own heart. It's a memoir by Robert Gottlieb, who worked as editor-in-chief at the publishing houses Simon and Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf before landing at the New Yorker magazine.